Taking a dip and a drink

My mother had bird baths. So eventually, I got one too.

I admit it. I haven’t been a good bird bath owner … until this year. I read where birds have a hard time finding water all year long.

Really?

Okay, so I decided this year I would try to make a point of keeping the bird bath clean and full.

Holy cow—what had I been missing?

During the summer, I like to write in our screened-in porch. This year, I moved the bird bath from the outer yard to the area around our pool. Holy crap! Those birds are there all day long. Not only are they taking a drink (and I’ve seen sparrows, robins, crows, red-winged blackbirds, grackles, and others I don’t know of) and bathing. Holy cow, do they like to bathe!

The other day, there was a bath-a-thon. Five birds at a time were vying to clean their feathers (while others sat on the electric lines scraping their beaks clean). Suddenly there were twenty or more birds vying to take a bath. The overflow decided the pool might be a handy bath—but too many times Mr. L has had to fish out dead birds from the skimmers, so I ran out and made noise to let them know that the pool was a potential death trap. So when they all flew away, I noted the water in the bird bath was a disgusting brown. So I dumped it and started again. The first couple of birds decided the water was too cold and flew away, but an hour later, it was bird bath heaven once again.

I read where it’s really hard for birds to find water in the winter, so now it’s my job to figure out how to get water in the bird bath and not let it freeze. I know there are electric wires for horse troughs, so are there heaters for bird baths?

The birds have given me so much pleasure watching them do what we do—keep clean and drink. It’s such a small thing to help them to keep doing that.

Do you have a bird bath?